Pete, an American expat living in the Philippines

PhilippinPete

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Hello everyone,
My name is Philip Peter Madlem and I go by the moniker "Pete". I'm an retired US NAvy Vietnam era vet/retired chef and I have been residing in the Philippines since 2002/03. A number of years ago I entertained the idea of trying to run a Linux distro but quickly found myself profoundly confused. Just the idea of messing with an "iso" sent me over the edge. But here I am, about eight years past that original attempt and things seem much clearer now. I want to use a Linux OS and I believe now is the time to dive head first into this. I use my laptop for the following- Watching videos (YT, Bitchute etc), emailing, chatting, researching alternative media news sites and some personal word processing, making home videos and taking pictures and I use qBittorrent, all of which is fairly basic stuff. I am not a programmer, but have some old. Navy shipmates that I am in touch with that are wizards. So I am thinking about using Virtualbox and running Zorin (which I have briefly looked at) or Mint (which I haven't looked at). A little background on me, grew up in Portland Oregon area (sad to admit it now) left when I was 17 years old and traveled the world. I went to PDX in 1993 and worked as a private chef/estate manager for Peter Stott and then Mike Warn and then left the US for good at the end of 2002. I won't talk politics here, but I will end with this... 17 fascinates me and WWG1 WGA! Nice to be here and thanks for the warm welcome. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. I am using a two year old HP Pavilion with 11 gigs of free ram. And I have a 2 t external drive. I can't tell you much more than this, because I don't know much more than this. PS, I'm a "hands on" kind of guy, so video tutorials that walk me through the process are perfect for me. Again, thanks everyone!
 


What a wonderful intro, Pete, and welcome again.

I know someone who will be happy to chat with you about the Philippines, he should swing by soon.

Enjoy, and I'll keep in mind about the vids :)

Chris
 
Welcome Pete
Where in the fils ?....Dumaguete by any chance ?
We spent two and a half years there and returned to Australia in March this year

By the time we left, I was fed up with the blatant corruption....white skin prices etc etc and pretty much everything in general. The economy operates in a shambles most of the time. if it was not for the Aussies, Americans, Englishmen, and Germans the place would descend further into chaos than it already is.

The poverty factor which affects the majority of its citizens is enough to make a grown man cry.
And yet...despite all of that, the general runof the mill people of the fils are a happy bunch, who have grown accustomed to the way the place works. I tried....i really tried, but could not come to terms with the mindset that prevails.
So we sold the house which we had bought, headed to SIngapore to satisfy Australias quarantine requirements for our dog....stayed there for a month and a bit and then hopped a plane home.
We just made it back into Oz before the international flights stopped.

I can only imagine that Lucena City would not be quite as "provincial" as Dumaguete. The 'foreigner' population of Dumaguete is quite high...mainly Americans, with a good sprinkling of German, English and a lesser number of Australians. The city is one of Universities,,,,attracting students from all over the world, but mainly from China. The prices attract the Chinese because as you know the peso is worth next to nothing.

Welcome to this forum, Pete.
 
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Nearly crossed beams there, Brian - you know that's dangerous :)
 
Welcome Pete
Where in the fils ?....Dumaguete by any chance ?
We spent two and a half years there and returned to Australia in March this year

more later......interrupted .
In Lucena City, about three hours south of Manila (Quezon province)
 
You could take an astute guess that Brian was the bloke I was referring to :)

He and I are amongst each other's best Mates (known each other 6 years come 1 October or so, and work together most days here and at a forum prior to that) and have never met. Now he's back in OZ we live only 160 km (100 miles) apart, but the borders between Queensland and New South Wales are closed due to COVID :mad:

Still, we'll get there one day, soon, we hope.

Brian goes to "silly time" (daylight saving) in about 4 weeks, currently we are 2 hours ahead of you, and Brian will go to 3, then.

But you'll get help from all sorts of quarters from all around the globe, so have fun.

Wiz
 
I saw your profile comment difficulty with vitual box and also your chef ref; so i thought this my be of minor interest there are different approaches to useing Linux and of course I always have at the back of my mind my spiritual mentor mantra of Gino D'acampo "minimum effort maiximum satisfaction" . I don't know if zorin will boot live from a USB , i might check that out sometime but thats another way of giving Linux distro a soin to see if it suits
 
I saw your profile comment difficulty with vitual box and also your chef ref; so i thought this my be of minor interest there are different approaches to useing Linux and of course I always have at the back of my mind my spiritual mentor mantra of Gino D'acampo "minimum effort maiximum satisfaction" . I don't know if zorin will boot live from a USB , i might check that out sometime but thats another way of giving Linux distro a soin to see if it suits
I was trying to use Virtualbox, but I think I need to enable VTX? on my HP. So... last night I went a different route and installed Zorin 15.2 (duel boot) on an old Asus with a USB. It was so less complicated. I think I will do this with my HP too.
 
I saw your profile comment difficulty with vitual box and also your chef ref; so i thought this my be of minor interest there are different approaches to useing Linux and of course I always have at the back of my mind my spiritual mentor mantra of Gino D'acampo "minimum effort maiximum satisfaction" . I don't know if zorin will boot live from a USB , i might check that out sometime but thats another way of giving Linux distro a soin to see if it suits
And it runs beautifully!
I was trying to use Virtualbox, but I think I need to enable VTX? on my HP. So... last night I went a different route and installed Zorin 15.2 (duel boot) on an old Asus with a USB. It was so less complicated. I think I will do this with my HP too.
and it runs beautifully
 
Pete, I finally filled in the blanks @ post#3 ... !!
 
Condobloke, I figured out that I need to enable VTx on my HP, which I did yesterday. I then ran a "Try Zorin" install with Virtualbox. After that, I chatted with a shipmate from years past and he said do a "Full install" using Virtualbox, which I will do today.
So now I have learned how to install via usb and Virtualbox, so I'm definetly learning something here.
 
Hello Pete,

Welcome to the forums and have fun getting to know GNU/Linux!
 
The Zorin Brothers put together a good product, Pete, I have used it in my stable since Zorin OS 9, so have fun :)

Be aware, if you did not notice it in the install, that they have a small presence of what some may regard as a "phone home" functionality.

We had this reported on by one of our Members Stan @atanere end of last year. They are here

https://linux.org/threads/another-quandary-regarding-updates.26699/post-81778

and here

https://linux.org/threads/zorin-os-15-and-privacy-concerns.26415/post-80921

and you can search under Google with

zorin os census

I am going to head over there to those threads and perhaps bump them this weekend with news from Zorin's privacy policy updated 25th August.

Cheers and

Avagudweegend

Wiz
 

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